Deeplinks Blog posts about Privacy

Since President George W. Bush signed this bill into law on October 26, 2001, the Patriot Act has been ardently defended by its supporters in the intelligence community and harshly criticized by members of Congress, the tech industry, and privacy advocates like us. Despite the debates that have unfolded over the last 15 years, including last year’s reforms through the USA FREEDOM Act, there’s still a lot to learn about this controversial law.

Having for years enforced a constitutionally offensive border search regime at physical borders and U.S. international airports, Customs and Border Protection (CBP) recently proposed to expand its violations in troubling new ways by prompting travelers from countries on the State Department’s Visa Waiver Program list to provide their “social media identifier.”

When EFF launched a campaign last year to encourage the public to help us uncover police use of biometric technology, we weren’t sure what to expect. Within a few weeks, however, hundreds of people joined us in filing public records requests around the country.

Ultimately, dozens of local government agencies responded with documents revealing devices capable of digital fingerprinting and facial recognition, while many more reported back—sometimes erroneously—that they hadn’t used this technology at all. Several, however, either didn’t respond, demanded exorbitant fees, or outright rejected the requests.